PARENTAL STRESS EPIDEMIC!

  • 2 weeks ago
In this episode, we explore the U.S. Surgeon General's public health advisory on the pressures modern parents face. Highlighting alarming statistics, we discuss rising levels of stress linked to financial worries, social media influence, and the youth mental health crisis. The conversation addresses how unrealistic standards contribute to feelings of inadequacy and emphasizes the importance of strong family partnerships. We advocate for redefining parenting priorities to focus on meaningful connections with children and shared responsibilities, aiming to reduce stress and foster healthier family dynamics amidst today�s challenges.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/parent-stress-warning-1.7307945

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Transcript
00:00Good morning, everybody. Stephen Molyneux from Freedom Inn. Hope you're doing well. So this, this just came out.
00:06CBC News, August 30th, 2024. Modern parenting is so stressful that the US issued a health advisory.
00:13Parents say
00:14it's overdue.
00:16It says parenting these days can often feel like treading water, begging for someone to throw you a rope,
00:20but instead of pulling you out, a passerby gives you a high-five and says, I don't know how you do it all.
00:25The answer? Poorly, according to many parents.
00:29Evidently, the stress is taking a toll.
00:32On Wednesday, the US Surgeon General issued a public health advisory about the impact of modern stresses on parents' mental health,
00:39considering that previous Surgeon General advisories have included the risks of gun violence and smoking the public is paying attention.
00:45So I thought this was going to be kind of nonsense, but holy crap, is it ever kind of not?
00:49So I want to point that out. I mean, they really are talking about some very serious stuff
00:55about this. So
00:57my skepticism was false, was wrong.
01:03In addition to the traditional challenges of parenting, like protecting children from harm and worrying about finances,
01:08there are new stresses the previous generations didn't have to consider, said Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.
01:13These include social media, the youth mental health crisis, and increased financial strain,
01:18as the cost of some necessities like childcare have boomed.
01:22So
01:24the Surgeon General says guilt and shame have become pervasive after leading them to hide their struggles,
01:30which perpetuates a vicious cycle where stress leads to guilt, which leads to more stress.
01:35This was in the report. So these are the numbers, and it is,
01:39it's wild, it's wild. So percent of respondents who agreed with the following statements,
01:44I feel consumed by my worries about money, right? So look at this,
01:48parents, 66%, two-thirds of parents feel consumed about worries about money,
01:53compared to
01:5539% of others.
01:56So this is why people don't want to become parents, right? I don't talk about my stress because I don't want to burden others,
02:0360%, 66%.
02:05Money is a cause of a lot of the fights or tension in my family, 58%.
02:09I feel embarrassed talking about my money, my financial situation with others, 57%. I feel like no one understands how stressed out I am.
02:17And
02:19this is a parent as a whole, but I assume this is a little bit more for women.
02:23I feel like no one understands how stressed out I am, 62% of parents, and
02:2842% of
02:30others. So that's pretty wild, because you're supposed to be in a pair-bonded loving relationship,
02:35so you're supposed to have someone you can talk to about your stress,
02:38but they say I feel like no one understands
02:41how stressed out I am, 62% of parents. Now,
02:45I assume that that includes the single moms who don't really have anyone to talk to.
02:48My stress makes it hard for me to focus, 60% of parents, when I'm stressed, I can't bring myself to do anything,
02:5450%, half of parents are so stressed they can't bring themselves to do anything.
02:58Almost 50%, 48% of parents say most days my stress is completely overwhelming.
03:0642% say I'm so stressed I feel numb, and
03:1041% most days I am so stressed I can't
03:14function.
03:16Database on an online survey of 3185 American adults, and
03:23so
03:25it's not the most scientific, and it doesn't break it into married versus
03:29non-married, single mothers, and so on, right?
03:33So isn't that wild?
03:36So
03:37in its advisory, Murthy also cited data from a 2023 study from the APA,
03:43surveyed 3185. Oh, this is the same thing, post-pandemic stress. After breaking out responses from people with children under age 18,
03:5048% of those parents described themselves as completely overwhelmed. So only a quarter of non-parents said the same.
03:58The parent-specific breakdown, 41% said most days, okay, so we did all of that.
04:04Numbs a good word, said Rebecca Morin,
04:0734, a daycare provider and mom living in Smiths Falls, Ontario.
04:11Morin has two children, ages 4 and 6. One has autism, and Morin says advocating for her is
04:16a full-time job on top of the pressures of daily parenting, the cost of living, and work.
04:22She says there's always something to do for the kids, a school fundraiser, a dance fundraiser, scouts,
04:26events, family commitments, and so many other things. Having hobbies is a thing of the past.
04:31I even struggled to take a shower the other day because I was just completely exhausted.
04:34We are an extremely stressed-out generation of parents.
04:38Well, that's tough, and one of the things, of course, that has happened
04:44over the last couple of generations is people have become
04:47increasingly less Christian. Now, of course, in the Christian world, in the Christian worldview, in the Christian morality, in the Christian philosophy,
04:56you make a vow before God, and
04:58you can't break it.
05:01So, in part because of
05:05understandable youthful exuberance and desire to
05:07have sex, to go party, to travel, to not settle down, and so on, to live a secular life,
05:13you get those benefits when you're young. One of the problems that this happens is that men feel less
05:19obligated, and women feel less obligated to stay in difficult family situations.
05:24The pair bonding was...the pair bonding is not if everyone's healthy and happy, and sex life is great,
05:31and the kids are doing fine, and everything's swimming, and income is good, right?
05:36That's not...the pair bonding is for the tough stuff. The pair bonding is, well,
05:39you've got an autistic kid. The pair bonding is somebody gets really sick. The pair bonding is
05:44somebody gets depressed. The pair bonding is you've got a
05:48parent who's taking, you know, five years to die. I mean, that's what the pair bonding is for, all the tough stuff.
05:55And the problem with the hedonistic lifestyle, and by that, I don't just mean people who aren't
06:01religious. I mean, just people who don't have a moral philosophy at their core.
06:07The problem with the hedonistic lifestyle is
06:10it doesn't build up the moral fiber to survive
06:14the disasters in life. Look, come on. In your teens, and in your 20s, I guess even into your 30s,
06:21how bad do things get? I mean, you have your stressors, you know, your career, and work, and you have
06:29education, and then you have boyfriends, and girlfriends, and breakups, but it's really not that bad.
06:33It's really not that big a deal compared to the stressors that happen later in life.
06:36So the problem is that if you don't develop much discipline in your teens and your 20s,
06:41then
06:42when your mid to late 30s and thereon goes, man, that's when some of the real tough stuff in life rolls along.
06:48Right? You kids could get sick.
06:50Your partner can get unwell. You can have financial issues. Careers can go awry.
06:57Parents age, and the whole elder generation starts to get sick, and there's mental health issues that occur
07:05with siblings and so on. Like, it's a big issue.
07:09It's a big issue, especially if you've got extended family. I mean, people start falling off the waterfall of
07:14death on a fairly regular basis, and it's tough.
07:17So if you have this sort of hedonistic lifestyle, you don't build up moral fiber if you don't take your vows particularly seriously.
07:23And I've talked to this with a bunch of Christians who are like, well,
07:25I'm thinking of getting divorced, and I'm like, but you made a vow before God, and
07:29this is going to imperil your soul and shake it off, right? So with this, right, where's the father?
07:36Right? Where's the father?
07:38One has autism, so maybe she's a single mom, or maybe the dad bailed because
07:42it's a challenge with autism, and that's partly the result of this sort of
07:48enjoy, right? So,
07:49you know, the devil sort of thing where the devil gives you all these benefits, and then the costs comes later, right?
07:55You get all this free stuff, and then the cost comes later. Well, that's hedonism, right? You get all this free stuff.
08:00Your 20s are a blast.
08:02You're traveling, partying, drinking, have a lot of sex, dating a lot or whatever, and then
08:07your late 30s and thereafter becomes more and more
08:13difficult, and that's because you just don't have the moral fiber. So that's tough, right?
08:20So,
08:22comparison culture. I thought this was interesting.
08:24Part of modern parenting's unique struggles about the U.S. search in general calls our culture of comparison, propagated by influences and online trends that create
08:31unrealistic expectations for parents to pursue.
08:34Parents are inundated with elaborate school lunch ideas, strategies for breaking generational fifth cycles, videos on
08:39back-to-school party themes, and influences baking their old goldfish crackers.
08:45Julie Romanowski, a parenting coach and consultant based in Vancouver, says that's the poison. That's pure poison comparing to anyone whether you're
08:52whether or not you're a parent or have children is toxic.
08:57Social media is not helping that. It has tanked so many parents' mental health. Okay.
09:01Let's be honest about this. That's a girl thing. That's a female thing.
09:06That's a woman thing.
09:09You know, when was the last time you heard your average straight male
09:15saying, well, I can't wear this. This was so last season.
09:20Right? I mean, come on. Or has cared about their shoes or has cared about
09:25exactly how, well, the hair thing is a little bit. Everyone's got their broccoli hair these days.
09:31So maybe that's it. But for the most part, this comparing to the ideal and feeling
09:38that you are falling short and getting stressed about it, that is
09:43overwhelmingly, though, of course, not exclusively, it's overwhelmingly a
09:47female issue.
09:50And I think it's a single mother issue,
09:52maybe even a little bit more because single mothers do feel like they're not doing quite right by their kids because
09:57they don't have a male influence. And so listen,
10:00I mean, this is part of the overlapping circles of male and female and you sort of take the males and females apart and the
10:06structure doesn't survive, right? It's like an archway. You take out the keystone, the whole thing collapses.
10:11Because
10:12women are there to remind men of social standards and
10:16men are there to remind women of individualism and critical thinking. And both are important, right?
10:21You have to, you know, as I sort of found to my both joy and peril,
10:25you have to have social standards that you're willing to adhere to. I get that.
10:31Even though some of them don't make a lot of sense,
10:34that's fine. And women are there to remind men of the value of, well, we have to do this and we owe a thank-you note.
10:39And, you know, you got to bring flowers to that. And so you got to call someone.
10:44You know, men don't remember other men's birthdays, right?
10:48It's kind of the way that it goes. But women keep these social threads going. They keep this politeness going.
10:55They keep this thoughtfulness going. And I think that's great. I really do. And it can get too far.
11:00Right? So women don't have a break on
11:05this comparison idealism conformity stuff because the break is men.
11:10Right? Just as men don't really have a bottom to failing to observe social norms,
11:14which is why you get this Boo Radley Bachelors and so on, right?
11:17So men don't really have a bottom to ignoring social norms or not caring about these little thoughtful consideration things
11:24because we have women to remind us of that. And without women to remind us of that,
11:29males fall into, you know, video game,
11:32living on a futon and putting the TV on the box it came on, on the ground.
11:36There's no particular home making stuff that men do, right? You just, you know, ramen noodles and
11:44a tablet and you're fine. And so
11:47men don't have a bottom because the bottom is women and
11:50women don't have a top to their anxiety because the top to their anxiety is men reminding them that it's not that important.
11:55So when men and women are separated, men fall into squalor and women
12:02rise into
12:03stress and sort of panic and so on. So this is why we need each other, right? And they're both very, very important.
12:09Studies have linked comparing your own parenting to what you see on social networking sites with higher rates of maternal depression,
12:15higher cortisol levels and increased envy and anxiety in mothers specifically.
12:21So this is interesting as well, right? So you always have to look at this language.
12:26You always have to look at this language.
12:28Parents are inundated with elaborate school lunch ideas. Okay.
12:32I mean, this is what men need to say, turn it off,
12:35right? I'm so stressed because I have to, I have to carve animal crackers from
12:42nothing. I have to make goldfish crackers from scratch and the woman gets all tense about this and her husband is like, no, you don't.
12:51No, no, you don't. And there's a negotiation, right? I'm not going to get obsessed with standards.
12:55And I'm also going to let you
12:58remind me to keep the social niceties going. This is sort of the male-female deal, right?
13:03So parents are not inundated with anything. You choose to go and seek it out,
13:09right? I mean,
13:10women can fall into the kind of masochism of infinite expectations pretty easy, right? Men can do it too, right?
13:17I have to have abs. I have to have a giant beard. Like, you know, you see on social media these ads for like
13:24testosterone improvement workout and it's, you know, some guy
13:27with ripped abs at 60 and a giant lion's head, right? So it can get a little silly for men as well, but
13:35nobody's inundated with anything.
13:37You,
13:40you choose to consume it. You choose to pursue it. You choose to make this your standard. That's not, you're not inundated, right?
13:47Let's see here. So, oh
13:50yeah, there was this woman who says,
13:53Sharma Vadnais, a mom of three, says the generation of parents is overloaded by online information. No, you're not. No, you're not.
13:59You, you choose to pursue it. You choose to consume it. You choose to compare yourself to it and you choose to feel bad about it.
14:05She jokes that as an influencer and parenting blogger, she's part of the problem. Ha ha, funny, funny, funny.
14:09Even though she tries to focus on her own family and resist the urge to doomscroll, the stress of parenting,
14:14she says is constant. Even now, just a few months into her maternity leave from her job at the federal government,
14:19Sharma Vadnais says she's worrying about her return to the office a year from now. Yeah.
14:25Yeah, it's really, really important in life to not let stress just rise to whatever you're doing in life, right?
14:33Right, it's really, really important, right?
14:36So, you know, that, that weird mole that you had that got biopsied and it's fine and just got removed,
14:42so enjoy that, like, for six months, right? So, if you look at
14:48women throughout almost all of human history and say to them, well, the problem is that I'm getting paid, you know,
14:55$100,000 or $80,000
14:58to stay at home and be with my kids and then I go back to a cushy job
15:01I can't be fired from with the government, I think most women would say, well, that's a dream come true.
15:06Oh, and please show me all of your labor-saving devices again. Wait, your house cools in the summer and heats in the winter with a
15:12push of a button.
15:13You've got electricity.
15:16That's, that's very, very cheap.
15:18You have a dishwasher. You have a laundry room machine. You have a
15:23Roomba. You have a vacuum cleaner. I used to have to take my
15:29carpets out on a monthly basis and beat them half to death in the backyard and pray to God
15:34it didn't rain when my laundry was out and you have all of this
15:38stuff that's automated and you have a horseless carriage that you can push a button and drive anywhere for, for very, very cheap.
15:44I mean, my God, right? So, it's
15:47if you get better circumstances, you have, I mean, you can make a choice, right?
15:52So you can say, well, the parenting is really tough because I'm getting paid to stay home for a year
15:57and then I have to go back to a cushy job with the federal government as, you know,
16:01I think the majority of women, certainly the majority of workers for the government are women. It's a, it's a prop-up scheme.
16:07So,
16:09yeah, I mean, you're worrying about having to go back to the office.
16:12The other thing, of course, is that you can just stay home.
16:15It's, it's pretty easy to not be too stressed about money.
16:19I used to have these arguments with family members all the time. It's pretty easy to not be stressed about money. Just stop spending.
16:27It's pretty easy. Just stop spending. I mean, I've been up and down with finances in my life.
16:32There was a time when I was living on six or seven hundred bucks a month.
16:37Six or seven hundred bucks a month I was living on and
16:40and
16:42what would that be? I don't know, 15,
16:441,500 bucks a month now. So, and I was not stressed about money. I just didn't spend.
16:51Right? I would get,
16:53I would get big vats of
16:58pasta and, and,
17:00you know, no-name tomato sauce and maybe a bit of cheese if I was in the money and I would cook all that up for
17:06a week. I would get, I would get coupons. There was a subway when I was in school in Montreal doing
17:12undergrad. There was a subway that you could get. It was two-for-one.
17:16So I would go and get as loaded as I could without spending extra money.
17:20Oh, a little bit more meat. Oh, a little bit more this. And I would get two-for-one
17:24subs and that would be four dinners for about five bucks.
17:29So you, you just,
17:32you just live cheap. I didn't, I didn't have a car. I didn't even take the bus.
17:36I used to bicycle everywhere. I had a job that I used to bike to for an hour to get to work.
17:42Finch and McCowan, up at Finch and McCowan from Don Mills and Lawrence. I used to bike 45 minutes to an hour depending on the traffic.
17:48And that's how I, so I even saved the money on the bus. So you just,
17:52I didn't, didn't go watch movies. I would, my friends and I would all chip in to rent a movie.
17:57So it was like a buck a head.
17:58So we played Dungeons and Dragons when I was younger so that we didn't have to pay for that.
18:03So you just, I mean, it's pretty easy to not worry about money and just spend less.
18:07Oh, but I'm used to this. Okay. Well, then, then you're going to be stressed. So I, I don't understand why people just
18:12don't do that.
18:14Right. Just, just spend less, you know, my income dropped by like, I don't know, up to 80% at times after de-platforming. So I just spend less.
18:25It's really not that complicated. It's the old, this is a character in the Dickens novel, right? It said,
18:30basically he said, income is
18:36$40,000 a year, expenses are
18:4039,500, result happiness, income is 40,000 a year, expenses of 40,500 result misery. It's really that simple. All right.
18:48She says, ever since the pandemic, I think it's just been one thing after another,
18:52and I don't feel like we're being supported or even provided with supports or resources.
18:56Right.
18:57So I have a problem. Other people need to fix it. Unfortunately, that is a lot of female thinking and that's not the end of
19:03the world. It's not a bad thing. It's just the way that it generally works in the female mind.
19:07I have a problem. Other people need to provide resources. That's why we have a civilization.
19:11That's why we have houses and air conditioning and heating and all that. Right. So,
19:16so she says, it's just constantly go, go, go. These are all choices.
19:19If you're going to have your kids involved in every extracurricular activity known to man,
19:23you're going to be busy and stressed and driving and late and all the time, but then just don't.
19:30Oh, but my kids and I'll just find ways to,
19:33you know, honestly, you can spend 15 bucks on a Monopoly board and you can get months of fun
19:39where you don't have to go anywhere. Do kids want activities? No, they want connection with
19:45their parents. I mean, and you know, nothing my daughter likes more than to go for a long hike
19:52and chat. I mean, that's free. Literally walking is free. So anyway, has parenting really become
19:58harder? Many of the longstanding challenges of parenting, keeping your children safe, meeting
20:03their needs, the division of labor, time constraints aren't unique to this generation.
20:06Note experts, including the surgeon general. But several studies in recent years have noted some
20:11new pressure. For example, there are more women working full time, but women are still consistently
20:15take on a larger share of unpaid household work, including chores and childcare. So you can't have
20:20any discussion about parenting without digs at men. There's a rule. It's like a rule of physics.
20:32Any woman in particular, any woman who writes about parenting and challenges have to take a
20:39dig at men, right? There are more women working full time. So this isn't a new pressure. This is
20:45a choice, right? This is a choice. Women still consistently take on a larger share of unpaid
20:51household work. So they have to say unpaid, right? There is no such thing as, I mean, maybe for
21:01single women, but certainly for married women whose husbands out earn them, there's no such
21:06thing as unpaid household work. Somebody has to pay for it, right? Somebody has to pay for it.
21:11So, yeah, they just have to say, well, the problem is men not doing their fair share.
21:19But we men are doing our fair share by paying into the taxes that pay women to stay home during
21:24maternity leave. And if you're both going to work, well, here's the thing, right? So if you want a
21:35house as clean and perfect as a full-time stay home housekeeper, or I would say housewife,
21:42hausfrau, but if you want to have a perfectly clean and wonderful and well-run household,
21:51and you want to work full time, well, you're asking the impossible. It's just not going to
21:54happen, right? Because you've got work, you've got kids, you've got the house. And the idea that
21:58you can do them all perfectly, it's bizarre. Men, we're always told that you can't have it all,
22:06right? And this idea that women can take on house, kids, and work and do them all perfectly
22:15is crazy. It's impossible. It's like being at two places at one time. You simply can't do it,
22:22right? When you're working cleaning the house, you're not parenting or working at your job.
22:26When you're working at your job, you're neither cleaning the house nor parenting. When you're
22:29parenting, usually you're neither at work nor cleaning the house. So you dial up one, you dial
22:35down the other, right? I remember many years ago in the business world, I did a program. I wrote a
22:42program, which was an interface for prioritization. And there were a bunch of different spending
22:46areas for corporations. And as you dragged one line up, the other line went down. You drag one
22:52line up, the other lines go down. That's just the way that life is. Whatever you're doing, right?
22:57I'm doing this show. I'm not parenting. Neither am I talking with my wife, neither am I cleaning
23:02the house. So whatever you focus on, whatever you're doing, you're not doing everything else.
23:07This just seems kind of obvious to me. I'm not sure why this is tough, right? So if you say to
23:14your husband and you agree with your husband, we're going to put our kids in daycare and I'm
23:20going to work, then you have to say, then the quality of the housework is going to suffer.
23:24Is that okay? And men are okay with the house being less clean. Men are okay with the house
23:29being less organized. Men are okay with the house being messier. I mean, it's how we live with
23:33bachelors, right? I used to live on Duplex Avenue way back in the day. And even now,
23:43when my wife and I are watching some show and we see some sort of messy place,
23:49I'm like, ah, duplex. We still make that joke. And that was after I tied it up because I had
23:55a woman coming over. So you just lower your standards. I mean, you have to lower your
24:00standards. I'm going to get a full-time job, which means the house is going to be a lot messier. No,
24:04the house has got to be perfect. The kids have to have every activity. I have to be at work.
24:08And you get stressed because you're not dialing down some stuff because you're dialing up other
24:14stuff. I don't know. It's strange to me. It's like a man saying, well, I want to be in a
24:19monogamous relationship and then saying, but I'm also going to date. No, if you're in a monogamous
24:27relationship, you don't date anyone but your wife. So I don't know. It's just kind of odd for me.
24:33So to constantly take on a large share of unpaid, I've got to say, unpaid household work,
24:38it's like someone's got to pay. Someone's got to keep their bills paid, right? At the same time,
24:43parents are spending more time with their children each day than previous generations.
24:46I thought this was interesting. The Economist calculated in 2017 that parents spend twice as
24:50much time with their children as parents did in 1960s. So women doubled, but men went up like
24:56five times, right? So that's kind of important. So women doubled their time with their kids,
25:00but men went up like five or six times, but it's still a few percentage points lower
25:04than women. So of course they say, well, men are still doing it less than women,
25:08even though men have increased sort of five or six fold the time they spend with their kids,
25:11whereas women have only doubled. So I thought that was interesting. You just, you can't praise
25:16men. You just, this is just a reality. You cannot, cannot praise men. Society hasn't been successful
25:23in supporting parenting young children, says Lisa Strohcheiden, a sociology professor at the
25:29University of Alberta, editor-in-chief of the journal Canadian Studies in Population.
25:33This is true whether you consider the number of spaces where children or their noise aren't
25:37welcome, or whether you look more broadly at the reality of the school day being shorter than the
25:40average workday. Well, that's not society, that's teachers unions. So that's not society as a whole.
25:46And it's not so much that people, I mean, nobody ever had a problem with my daughter
25:53being around. I remember taking, I took my daughter to, it's a lovely restaurant in Toronto
25:59where I proposed to my wife, and my wife and I took my daughter when she was about six months
26:05old back to that restaurant to sort of celebrate all of that as we had a tough time having kids.
26:09And my daughter was like so charming. I can't remember if she was six months to a year.
26:15And why can I not remember? My wife would remember, she'd probably remember the exact
26:19day and what I was wearing, pants. But I can't remember because I'm a man and I focus on other
26:25things. But my daughter was so charming that, and it was actually the first time that people had,
26:31that we weren't with her for a brief moment, that the waitress, you know, picked her up and
26:35after asking permission and took her back to meet the chef and the other, because she was
26:39just so much fun and so charming and all of that. So, and my daughters, I remember my daughter,
26:44we were on an airplane and it was a long flight and she was very little and she was walking up
26:49and down and everybody was smiling and all of that. So it's not that people don't like having
26:55kids around. It's that, and there's a restaurant not too far from where I live that had a really
27:04nice, really nice specials on Thursday night. My daughter and I would go there and they always
27:10welcomed us. We wouldn't go there every Thursday, but, you know, once or twice a month we'd go
27:13because it was really cheap. And we got to know them and we chatted and they would bring her a
27:18free dessert if she wanted it. And she was just, everybody loved, and it wasn't, it was not high
27:24end, but it was medium to high end. Again, the specials were really cheap, so it was great for
27:29me because I don't like to spend a huge amount of money, but wow, everybody has always loved my
27:35daughter everywhere she went. And so I don't know this whole, like, oh, they're not welcome.
27:45It's the kids who are out of control, the kids who are disconnected, the kids who are
27:50screaming and throwing things and having tantrums, right? Those aren't welcome,
27:54but that's not because kids aren't welcome. Well-behaved kids or kids well-bonded with
27:58their parents are, right? Great. All right. That said, this woman, Strohschein, she questions the
28:06statistics cited in the Surgeon's General Report that 70% of parents say parenting now is more
28:10difficult than it was 20 years ago. There just isn't the definitive data to support that. She
28:14added, of course, parents are going to say it's harder today. Complaining about things being too
28:21hard. A little bit more male or a little bit more female? You be the judge. One issue may be the
28:26framing of it, she said, where we believe that our children's success depends on how we parent
28:30them and the idea that there's one best way to parent every child. This is now creating these
28:35mental health crises where people feel that they're not doing enough or that they're not
28:39successful or that they're in danger of not succeeding, and it seems like a recipe for
28:42trouble. Well, so that's, again, that's a bit more of a female thing as a whole, that men are like,
28:49you know, I mean, you know, love your kids, spend time with your kid, give your kids some good
28:53values, and let nature play its course, right? Let nature take its course. And that's the fact.
29:01Listen, I mean, outside of extreme abuse, parenting does not have a massive amount to do with the
29:08eventual success of your children. I mean, it's just a fact. Obviously, we're not comparing this
29:14to peaceful parenting, but in general, how kids end up is, it's hard to find an external
29:26cause for that, right? Whether it's internal like IQ or other things, but how kids turn out?
29:34I mean, it's funny, because I was definitely going down a bad road before philosophy,
29:37so philosophy really worked to help save me. But through philosophy, my friends at the time were
29:43exposed to philosophy, and they basically hated it, and their lives turned out badly. So what was
29:48it that made me respond positively to philosophy, and my friends respond negatively or in a hostile
29:53manner to philosophy? I don't know. I can't claim massive, you know, internal credit. Like I started
30:00reading philosophy, and I was like, this is the greatest thing ever. And this has been my life's
30:04work for, you know, 42 years, right? So the fact that I responded positively to philosophy,
30:13and have loved philosophy for over 40 years, and have dedicated my entire life, I mean, certainly
30:21in the last 20, but even before that, it was a pretty significant portion of my life. The fact
30:25that I have dedicated my life to living philosophy and spreading philosophy, is that because of
30:32philosophy? Nope. Because again, I, and there's another friend of mine who lived philosophically,
30:38but there were two of us out of like the group of 20 or 30 friends, right? So, you know, 7.5 to
30:4510% of us responded positively to philosophy, although we were all exposed to it, right? I
30:51mean, how many Rush fans become objectivists and then Aristotelian or whatever, right? It doesn't,
30:57so it's really hard to, I mean, if I hadn't been exposed to philosophy, my life would have been far
31:06worse. And not just me, because of my skills, the world would have been far worse. But it was not
31:11the exposure to philosophy that did it. It was the exposure to philosophy, plus some X factor within
31:17me, right? A lot of people try to learn guitar, right? I remember trying to play All Dead, All
31:23Dead by Queen on the guitar, learning how to do it in an okay fashion, and saying, my fingers are
31:28short, it hurts, it does not, you know, once you're really good at something and have a natural bend
31:32for it, like language and writing for me, then when you don't have that same facility with other
31:38things, you really notice it, right? You really notice it. So, but some people pick up guitar and,
31:45you know, just absolutely love it. And, you know, as the old song says, I played it till my fingers
31:49bled, right? So, so yeah, the idea that your kid's success is all to do with your parenting, and you
31:55can make one mistake and things go to hell in a handbasket, it's not true. All right, Romanowski
32:01agrees the advisory is long overdue and somewhat bittersweet. It was about time, that's what I
32:07thought, we should have been talking about this 20 years ago. It's almost like it's so far gone
32:11that his recommendations barely scratched the surface. Ah, yes, despair. Fidelia Cabrera, a
32:17mom of four living in Ottawa, says she thinks part of the stress is how much parents are
32:21overscheduled. There's never enough time. Everything always feels rushed, and you feel like you're never
32:25doing things right, she told CBC as she was leaving for a meeting at her child's school.
32:31You want to give so much of yourself, but at the same time, where are the moments for yourself?
32:35The parents Romanowski work, works with, the parents Romanowski works with. I generally,
32:41generally have one or two fairly typical children, good jobs, partners and co-parents,
32:45nice houses in good neighborhoods, and they still feel like they're barely making it,
32:48she said. Physically, they look like they're fine on paper, they look great, but the everyday reality,
32:53living day in and day out with children, they're barely hanging on, right? Very interesting,
32:57I don't think they have comments on this, right? No. So, they're barely hanging on.
33:04Well, so, you need males and females, you need males and females to work with parenting. It's
33:18a male-female thing. We have evolved for mothers and fathers to work together,
33:22and if you don't do it, this is kind of how it ends up, and it is a matter of choice. So,
33:27women need to lower their expectations, and not feel responsible for everything,
33:31and need to have men. There's no men interviewed here, but of course, that's kind of inevitable.
33:35All right, freedemand.com slash donate to help out the show. Thanks, Bill. Bye.